Some Thoughts

Recently I had the occasion to go to Pakistan, the land of my birth and my life before marriage. I did not go for a holiday as such, it was more a visit. I went for four weeks but ended staying for eight. My time there was extremely pleasurable because of the people I stayed with. Today, Pakistan is certainly not the country that I was born in, it is not even the country I left twenty eight years ago and is quite different from the country I last visited five years ago. Such is the shifting nature of the politics of the place. I do not recognise many aspects of the country at all, but when did time stop still!

I flew from here at the time of the height of the banking crisis and it was quite surreal that the first thing I noticed after landing in Lahore were the rather tall and ostentatious buildings of many British banks – certainly a new phenomenon that was not there five years ago. There was much Western investment during the Musharraf years – and it is visible – regardless what the West thought of the general.

I have been going back to Pakistan regularly but this is the first time I actually noticed that there were rather a lot of Pathans in Lahore. Someone explained these were Afghans who came during the Soviet invasion. The Pathans of Lahore are gentle people running small businesses, but that is not the case elsewhere in the country. All immigrants bring their culture with them and while they adopt something from the place they come to they also introduce some of their own ways. Seeing some aspects of the Afghan culture so significantly influence some parts of the Pakistan of today made me wonder what was it that lacked in the Pakistanis, wherein lay the vacuum, that some of them embraced such a harsh aspect in such a short period of time?

Pakistan was created with ideals that are all but trampled on by now. The country is in turmoil on many fronts, but the man/woman in the street remains the affable, sanguine character as ever. I cannot say I saw grinding poverty where I was but I did see the masses short-changed regarding the basic utilities by the authorities in a shocking way. On a positive note schools are mushrooming all over the country and more and more parents are striving to send their children to schools where the curriculum is taught in the English medium. I remember reading Byron in school and a line by him that has always stayed with me ‘…with all thy faults I love thee still’ – embodies my feelings – in an adaptive way – for the land of my birth.